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I've found a bunch of other live TV feeds but they just blow my poor old computer processing to to smithereens and don't load well, so I haven't been able to watch them.
What's going on there now, as you see it?
The photos coming out of there are pretty frightening.
Hope you folks can pull it together.
The Greek people don't want to pull it together....that's the problem!!!!
The Greeks have seen their government as a giant sugar teat that they could suck on whenever and for whatever they wanted. And the politicians gave it to them, because that's how you got elected. But, of course, no one wanted to pay the taxes needed to keep the scheme going. Tax evasion is the national pastime, like baseball in the U.S.
Cyprus is hardly different, and thoroughly loaded with Greek debt - it could easily sink along with Greece. I've lived in both places, and nothing I saw or experienced could convince me that either country would long survive, much less prosper. And I was grateful to unload my house half a dozen years ago and skeedadle.
Greece is a failed state. Greece is dying, and I think Greek people finally grasp that. It is not a matter of whether the ship will sink, but simply whether it will sink now or a bit later. They are doomed, and they are panic-stricken...which, of course, they have every reason to be.
But, of course, it is all someone else's fault. Blame Germany, or the EU...but the Germans didn't create the Greek state nor the Greek society and culture. This problem began after WW II. The Greek Titanic has been heading for the iceberg, eyes wide open and brains totally disengaged for decades and decades.
I doubt that even with the bailout that the government will be able to rebuild Greece from the ground up - and that is what it needs. The Greeks, as a people, will resist with all their might. The changes will be endless, they will be deep and they will be excruciatingly painful...and the great sugar teat will vanish forever. So, even with the bailout, I believe, that Greece will collapse.
And without the bailout, it will collapse within less than a month, be bankrupt, out of the euro and trying to pay its bills with drachmas worth less than used toilet paper. It will be back to the old days when a simple postage stamp cost thousands of worthless drachmas.
It would probably be better - certainly no worse, if the euro zone had helped Greece organize an orderly exit and the Greek politicians had opted for that route.
But hubris has ever been a problem for Greece. It caused them to lose Thrace and the longed-for prize of Constantinople; their military adventurism against Ankara cost them the treasured enclave of Smyrna and mass deportations of Greeks, their coup-mongering military cost the Greek Cypriots more than a third of their country.....so why would they not stay straight on course heading for that iceberg?
In the U.S. I worked for an Alexandrian Greek for years, and because of him I met many other Greek immigrants from Greece and Asia Minor. I spent many wonderful evenings and holidays in their home, and it is sad to think of how many millions of their countrymen, many of whom are no doubt as warm and friendly as they were, are going to suffer very badly. However, the one negative thing I would say about those Greek friends and acqaintances was that across the board they had an Alice In Wonderland mentality when it came to politics, intriguing and history.
The Greek people don't want to pull it together....that's the problem!!!!
The Greeks have seen their government as a giant sugar teat that they could suck on whenever and for whatever they wanted. And the politicians gave it to them, because that's how you got elected. But, of course, no one wanted to pay the taxes needed to keep the scheme going. Tax evasion is the national pastime, like baseball in the U.S.
Cyprus is hardly different, and thoroughly loaded with Greek debt - it could easily sink along with Greece. I've lived in both places, and nothing I saw or experienced could convince me that either country would long survive, much less prosper. And I was grateful to unload my house half a dozen years ago and skeedadle.
Greece is a failed state. Greece is dying, and I think Greek people finally grasp that. It is not a matter of whether the ship will sink, but simply whether it will sink now or a bit later. They are doomed, and they are panic-stricken...which, of course, they have every reason to be.
But, of course, it is all someone else's fault. Blame Germany, or the EU...but the Germans didn't create the Greek state nor the Greek society and culture. This problem began after WW II. The Greek Titanic has been heading for the iceberg, eyes wide open and brains totally disengaged for decades and decades.
I doubt that even with the bailout that the government will be able to rebuild Greece from the ground up - and that is what it needs. The Greeks, as a people, will resist with all their might. The changes will be endless, they will be deep and they will be excruciatingly painful...and the great sugar teat will vanish forever. So, even with the bailout, I believe, that Greece will collapse.
And without the bailout, it will collapse within less than a month, be bankrupt, out of the euro and trying to pay its bills with drachmas worth less than used toilet paper. It will be back to the old days when a simple postage stamp cost thousands of worthless drachmas.
It would probably be better - certainly no worse, if the euro zone had helped Greece organize an orderly exit and the Greek politicians had opted for that route.
But hubris has ever been a problem for Greece. It caused them to lose Thrace and the longed-for prize of Constantinople; their military adventurism against Ankara cost them the treasured enclave of Smyrna and mass deportations of Greeks, their coup-mongering military cost the Greek Cypriots more than a third of their country.....so why would they not stay straight on course heading for that iceberg?
In the U.S. I worked for an Alexandrian Greek for years, and because of him I met many other Greek immigrants from Greece and Asia Minor. I spent many wonderful evenings and holidays in their home, and it is sad to think of how many millions of their countrymen, many of whom are no doubt as warm and friendly as they were, are going to suffer very badly. However, the one negative thing I would say about those Greek friends and acqaintances was that across the board they had an Alice In Wonderland mentality when it came to politics, intriguing and history.
Of course, allways it´s the people´s fault; intitutions and banks don´t have any responsability in this ¿right?. i have not seen any bank be penalized, i have not seen any of those entities that are dedicated to playing with the economy of a country like a chess board be penalized, the truth is that maybe the mentality of the greeks is not laudable in many ways, but certainly the citizens are the ones who end up paying while those economic terrorist close the crisis multiplying their money. Don´t mix historical cases with economy, and if you do, don´t name Germany, especially when it goes for Greece, because Germany has a debt with Greece amounting to 50,000 million euros for the Second World War that never was paid. I invite you to investigate it. I'm sick of speeches like "we have to raise taxes, later retirement, release the dismissal, privatize it... to avoid going bankrupt". Seems that they found the perfect formula to delete one by one all the civil rights that took decades to win.
From the tone of the BBC's report this evening, a disorderly default for Greece is looking more and more likely.
I find it difficult to see how the Greek government will be able to satisfy the requests/demands of the eurozone finance ministers without blowing the Greek govt coalition into smithereens and provoking yet more social unrest.
On the one hand, I do think the eurozone ministers are right to be incredulous about Greece's will and ability to turn things around with yet more money; on the other, I can see the average desperate Greek saying, "the hell with this...let's get out." But I haven't gotten any sense from the various news programs that I have seen that the Greek man-in-the-street realizes that while politicians could then backtrack on any or all austerity measures, that the new drachma would not be a magic bullet.
What public or private lender to the Greek government will want any payment (or promises of payment) in new drachmas? And if Greece cannot repay, she cannot borrow. If she cannot borrow, she is dead in the water. And with a bankrupt government none of the supposed benefits that would be restored to the public by rejecting the recent austerity regime will mean anything.
What would it mean to still be able to retire at age X with full health coverage, rather than at age X + 3 if your hospitals cannot buy medical equipment and medicines with the new currency?
It would appear that the best solution would be for Greece to leave the Euro and attempt to rebuild their economy from scratch.
It is going to be a long,long road to recovery. Now whether the Greeks have the will to be able to cope with the hard times ahead remains to be seen.
The nation has been a cesspit of corruption and dodgy dealings for a very long time. Lots of blame can be distributed here with scorn put on banks and inept politicians for the most part but to be fair the EEC lenders also should be called to answer why money was so forth coming ....but those were the times of easy money I guess. The realization that debt must be repaid didn't appear to have struck a note.
One wonders if criminal charges cannot be laid? Meanwhile the rich have already placed their wealth into safe overseas banks or into the London property market while again the poorer pay the price.
Default on euro debt, leave the euro, even leave the EU, introduce 15% flat tax, one half-page tax return, drastically reduce bureaucracy, let Greek entrepreneurs of every level operate freely, in the meantime borrow from China for sure, maybe also Russia, to pay pensions, health care, and laid-off bureaucrats.
May or may not work, but in my view worth a try, otherwise for sure the EU/eurozone bureaucrats will strangle you all and seize your property.
While allowing Greek entrepreneurs to operate freely on every level as stated above may suggest a true belief in lassez faire capitalism to my mind that was a big part of the problem in the first place and needs to be railed in. Without checks and controls in a land built around corruption this has clearly be shown not to work.
Of course, allways it´s the people´s fault; intitutions and banks don´t have any responsability in this ¿right?. i have not seen any bank be penalized, i have not seen any of those entities that are dedicated to playing with the economy of a country like a chess board be penalized, the truth is that maybe the mentality of the greeks is not laudable in many ways, but certainly the citizens are the ones who end up paying while those economic terrorist close the crisis multiplying their money. Don´t mix historical cases with economy, and if you do, don´t name Germany, especially when it goes for Greece, because Germany has a debt with Greece amounting to 50,000 million euros for the Second World War that never was paid. I invite you to investigate it. I'm sick of speeches like "we have to raise taxes, later retirement, release the dismissal, privatize it... to avoid going bankrupt". Seems that they found the perfect formula to delete one by one all the civil rights that took decades to win.
The Germans paid a lot of money in reparations in the past to the Greeks. As usual the folk less able will be called to make sacrifices. That's the shame of it. Meanwhile the fat cats have pulled out a small fortune from Greek banks and placed it in safe havens abroad.
There is a strong arguement that criminal charges should be laid against various politicans and bankers and businessmen and who ever was concerned with cooking the books.
An even greater shame was that unprepared nations such as Greece and a host of others were ever accepted into the Euro.
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